Formosan sika deer (Cervus nippon taioanus) raised in captivity at the Kinmen Livestock Research Institute may be the most genetically similar yet to their extinct wild cousins, National Taiwan University researcher Ju Yu-ten (朱有田) said.
The Kinmen Livestock Research Institute commissioned Ju, an associate professor at the university’s Department of Animal Science and Technology, to conduct research on the institute’s Formosan sika deer breeding program as part of an effort to promote tourism to the island chain and set a good example of environmental conservation.
Presenting his findings on Friday, Ju said that compared with the deer raised at Kenting National Park, the animals bred in Kinmen had a “purer” genetic makeup that showed a continuity with the genetic structure of the original wild Formosan sika deer.
Photo: CNA
Ju said that he had arrived at this conclusion after comparing the genetic material of the deer raised in Kinmen and Kenting with material gleaned from the tooth of a Formosan sika deer unearthed at an archeological dig.
The Formosan sika deer is a subspecies endemic to Taiwan, but all wild Formosan sika are extinct due to extensive hunting of the animal during the era of Dutch colonization and during the modernization undertaken by the Japanese colonial government, Ju said. All surviving specimens of the Formosan subspecies have been raised in captivity and then introduced into the wild, he added.
Ju said that the current stock of deer raised in captivity were not genetically pure, because those that were genetically closest to the wild Formosan sika deer — which were raised at the Taipei Zoo in the 1980s — had to be put down en masse after the group was infected with tuberculosis.
Kenting and Kinmen both received deer from Taipei Zoo prior to the outbreak, but while Kenting National Park introduced other subspecies of deer to its population, the Kinmen Livestock Research Institute kept its Formosan sika deer separate from others.
This separation, coupled with the geographic isolation of Kinmen, has made inter-breeding with other species nearly impossible, which is what has made the Kinmen sika deer the most “Aboriginal” of their kind, Ju said.
Meanwhile, institute director Wen Shuei-cheng (文水成) said that the facility has also developed a drink made from the deer’s antlers. Wen said the insitute aimed to use the drink in addition to the deer program to promote tourism to Kinmen.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not